Book Description

Excerpt from The Character of Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas The character of Ruy Blas is one difficult of interpretation.' To many critics the brilliant, ambitious lackey-minister seems as puzzling as the young, dreamy Danish prince was to the court at Elsinore. Doumie says he is entirely too silly. Brunetiere considers his conduct at times as improbable and inexplicable. Marzials goes so far as to express disbelief in him altogether. A careful analysis of the character of Ruy Blas, the details of which are given in the subsequent paragraphs of this paper, re veals the fact that he is withal a hero par excellence of the roman tic ideals in literature. Before proceeding to this analysis, it is only fair to the auth or to allow him to state his own purpose in creating such a char acter. In his preface to Ruy Blas, Hugo declares that the hero represents the struggling and aspiring people who have the future but not the present. The people for whom Ruy Blas, stands are orphans, poor, intelligent, and strong; placed very low, and aspiring very high; having upon their backs the marks of servitude and in their hearts the premeditations of genius. Ruy Blas is, therefore, to be considered as the symbol of a rising people struggling towards the light, and the type of an ambi tious, longing, dreamy parvenu. Hugo's method of portraying a dramatic character is to select a central idea, a logical formula, or a social antithesis, and then make his character conform to this. The wicked Lucrezia Bor gia has a true mother's heart. Into the deformed, scheming Triboulet he puts the affection of a father. The thoughts and actions of the bandit Hernani are worthy of a king. Gomez. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.